Built By the Gathering of the Saints

Ether never saw the city of Jerusalem. It was built long after his ancestors migrated to the Americas.

But he prophesied that a New Jerusalem would one day be established on the American continent, and that it would coexist with a rebuilt Old Jerusalem. As Moroni reported:

Ether saw the days of Christ, and he spake concerning a New Jerusalem upon this land.

And he spake also concerning the house of Israel, and the Jerusalem from whence Lehi should come—after it should be destroyed it should be built up again, a holy city unto the Lord; wherefore, it could not be a new Jerusalem for it had been in a time of old; but it should be built up again, and become a holy city of the Lord; and it should be built unto the house of Israel—

And that a New Jerusalem should be built up upon this land, unto the remnant of the seed of Joseph, for which things there has been a type.

Ether 13:4-6 (see also Articles of Faith, 10)

The “type” was Joseph himself, who was led away from his ancestors’ promised land to Egypt specifically to save his father’s household from a future famine. (See Ether 13:7; Genesis 37:28; Genesis 45:4-7.) In a similar way, a descendant of Joseph named Lehi was led by God out of Jerusalem across the sea to the Americas, and Joseph’s descendants will “build up a holy city unto the Lord, like unto the Jerusalem of old” (Ether 13:8).

John the Revelator later saw in vision a “new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven” (Revelation 21:2). This New Jerusalem represents Enoch’s city of Zion, which became a holy city and was carried up to the presence of God (Moses 7:69). The Lord told Enoch that a New Jerusalem would one day be built and that Enoch and his people would come down from heaven and unite with it. I love this promise and description of Jesus Himself coming with them:

Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there, and we will receive them into our bosom, and they shall see us; and we will fall upon their necks, and they shall fall upon our necks, and we will kiss each other;

And there shall be mine abode, and it shall be Zion.

Moses 7:63-64

Commenting on this passage, former BYU president Kevin J. Worthlin said:

The Lord made it clear that a new Zion is to come forth in this dispensation—one patterned so completely after Enoch’s Zion that the two societies will literally and physically unite in order to usher in the millennial reign of the Savior.

“Fulfilling the Destiny of Zion,” Brigham Young University Devotional Address, 27 August 2018

In February 1831, as church members began relocating to Kirtland, Ohio, the Lord emphasized the importance of building the New Jerusalem, “that ye may be gathered in one, that ye may be my people and I will be your God” (Doctrine and Covenants 42:9). A month later, He explained that they would find a place to settle further west, “and it shall be called the New Jerusalem, a land of peace, a city of refuge, a place of safety for the saints of the Most High God” (Doctrine and Covenants 45:66).

A year and a half later, the Lord taught Joseph Smith that He had established His church “for the restoration of his people,… and for the gathering of his saints to stand upon Mount Zion, which shall be the city of New Jerusalem.” He then added, “The city New Jerusalem shall be built by the gathering of the saints” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:3-4).

As we gather with other disciples of Christ and as we become more united with them, we are building this New Jerusalem which will be ready to receive Jesus Christ when He comes again.

President Russell M. Nelson reminded us that when Jesus returns, He will govern the earth “from both old Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem ‘built upon the American continent.'” He then called upon us “to help gather scattered Israel and to prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Lord” (“The Lord Jesus Christ Will Come Again,” General Conference, October 2024).

Today, I will help build the New Jerusalem by bringing others closer to Jesus Christ, deepening my own conversion, and becoming more united with other disciples. I will look forward to the day when a New Jerusalem will descend from heaven to unite with the New Jerusalem which we have built on the earth.